Can the maternal mortality rate among Black women be reversed?

By Natalia Galicza

Shalon Irving tried to do everything right. She didn’t miss a single doctor’s appointment during her pregnancy. She ruminated for days on a birthing plan to account for every conceivable variable: the music that’d play during childbirth, the guests allowed in the delivery room, the conversations they could and could not have in that space. She’d even tasked her mother with preemptively sterilizing the already sterile hospital room — just to err on the side of caution.

Irving understood that even the smallest of details could drastically alter health outcomes. She served as an epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and, prior to that role, as lieutenant commander for the U.S. Public Health Service. Her work focused on invisible dangers, like structural inequality and trauma, and their impact on patients’ well-being. So holding her daughter Soleil in her arms on January 3, 2017, against all odds, perceptible and otherwise, became what she considered her greatest accomplishment.

But exactly three weeks after she gave birth, Irving suffered a cardiac arrest. She’d been experiencing high blood pressure, weight gain, swelling and other symptoms — all of which she relayed to her health care providers over numerous appointments. Her last doctor’s visit took place hours before her heart attack. Irving tested negative for blood clots and preeclampsia, so she was sent home with blood pressure medication despite her insistence that something remained wrong. She turned out to be right. Emergency responders brought her to a local hospital after Irving collapsed to place her on life support. She died four days later.

Despite her caution, education and excellent insurance, Irving fell victim to a statistical pitfall that has long plagued the American health care system. More mothers die of complications related to pregnancy in the United States than any other high-income country in the world. Most of those deaths occur anywhere from a week to a year after birth. And they’re growing more frequent.

https://www.deseret.com/2023/11/15/23915958/maternal-mortality-rates-black-women